Talent Titans #42 – Attracting New Talent to Recruitment

This week, Suky talks about some of the ways we can attract new people into the staffing industry and shares some tips for hiring people who are new to recruitment.

Transcription

Hi I’m Suky from Professional Selection. Today I’d like to talk about attracting new blood into the recruitment industry.
I’m talking about individuals who may be fresh out of university or looking to change careers and so forth. I absolutely
think this is a fantastic industry and one that will continue going from strength to strength. Like every other industry
we’re going to evolve, so we always need those up and comers, people who have new ideas and think differently. But
unfortunately, this industry has a really high turnover. I’m sure there’s a million different reasons and everyone has
their own explanation as to why that is. But some of the key things I think, to be honest, in any type of recruitment is
getting the recruitment right in the first place. By that, what I’m talking about when it comes to this industry I think
it’s critical that you take the time in the interview process to really educate the individual about what recruitment is.
There are certain key questions I always ask people who are looking to come into the industry. One is do they want to be
a salesperson or do they want to go into Human Resources. If they say their motivator is they want to go into Human
Resources because they want to be involved in the company culture, strategy, learning, training, development and so
forth, do everyone a favour: don’t bring them into recruitment. That is not us. We are salespeople. Yes we get involved
with the recruitment aspect of it, but in the overall world of Human Resources, we are only at the front end. We do not
get involved with changing company policies and so forth. Yes, we can impact them in terms of advising, but we don’t own
that, that’s that internal HR. So first and foremost, if somebody wants to go into HR, don’t bring them into recruitment.

Secondly, as I said, its a sales position. It’s a highly targeted, metrics driven industry so make sure the individual
understands that. Now every company has different metrics and if you haven’t seen our video on KPIs I encourage you to
take a look. But tell them what your expectations are going to be. Now, a lot of people will say “Yeah, I can make 50
calls a day” or whatever that number is. But it’s the quantity/quality thing. And it’s training them to make the calls
but have the substance and the quality behind that call. So if you are bringing someone net new into this business, let
them know what a real, typical day looks like. I’d encourage you to paint all the negatives as well because ultimately
at the end of the day we all know the positives. But lets tell them about what a bad day can look like. You could have
worked 3 months on a particular candidate and client and the candidate accepted the job then at the last minute they say
“Sorry, not interested” for whatever reason. Or the client pulls the order and so forth. Unless you’re in retained search
all that work has gone down the drain. That’s really soul destroying for anybody to see their work go down the drain. But
the reason I encourage you to share this at the interview stage is that if the individual doesn’t have the self-belief,
self-starter and the ability when that happens (because it is going to happen) to be able to pick themselves up, brush
themselves down and start again. This industry isn’t going to be right for them.

There are many different examples. In some cases if they’re not working it might make sense to bring them into the office
and let them shadow somebody for a couple hours and so forth. If you do that what I encourage you to do is do not change
what you typically do in that office. Do not say to your existing recruiters you want them to do this or that. No, continue
to do what you normally do because that’s what they’re coming into. Not this fake everybody is happy everything is going
great and every person is answering the phone.

So, as always, I’m sure there’s many different opinions about how to attract somebody into this industry and what the
industry is really like. Would love to hear your opinion, so feel free to leave a comment below. Thanks for listening.